According to one statistic, Roald Dahl is so popular as a storyteller that one of his books, translated into 63 languages, is sold somewhere in the world every 2.6 seconds.
International sales are expected to total more than three hundred million copies.
So it's no wonder that the streaming service Netflix has secured the rights to the entire work of the British author, who died in 1990. The film and television world has long recognized the potential of Dahl's fantastic and weird art of storytelling. Netflix had already acquired animation rights to sixteen Dahl stories a few years ago. These projects would have opened the company's eyes "for a much more ambitious project", namely the creation of a "unique universe" across all types of entertainment. The deal was valued at over five hundred million pounds.
It recalls the famous commercials of Victor Kiam, the owner of the electric shaver manufacturer Remington, who joked in fifteen languages that he liked the product so much that he bought the whole company.
Morbid short stories
Of course, Netflix has not only acquired Dahl's anarchic children's books, but also the morbid short stories for adults.
In “Sophiechen und der Riese”, the friendly giant has built up huge stocks of good and bad dreams in his cave.
He destroys the bad ones and blows the good children into the bedroom on his nightly forays into the bedroom.
The fairy tale works like a metaphor for Dahl's literary activity. It is as if he wanted to empower children by telling them with his absurd stories and nonsense words that they are not alone in their perception of injustice in the chaotic adult world.
For his older readers, however, he saved the worst nightmares of his twisted imagination. As an author and as a person, this extraordinarily complex figure has sometimes been accused of sadism, sexism and racism, especially anti-Semitism. A few years ago, his estate administrators even felt compelled to apologize for angry statements about Jews. Now the Council of British Jews is urging Netflix not to touch up Dahl's views but to make a documentary about the anti-Semitism that is tarnishing its legacy.
Just the fact that Dahl lived in a house whose name "Gipsy House" violates today's sensibilities, that he originally thought up the Oompa Loompas in "Charlie and the Chocolate Factory" as African pygmies with stereotypical features or that he once thought even a "bastard like Hitler" harassed the Jews for no reason, makes him impossible.
Observers are now amused at the thought of how Netflix will deal with the dark side of the being and the work in the age of cancel culture, especially since the company also houses Prince Harry and Meghan Markle with their politically correct worldview under its roof.